Forced reproduction for profit: State-sanctioned violence against enslaved Black women

Written by: Becca Williams, SBT Copywriter

Please note that we are talking about sexual and racial violence. Do what you need to do to care for yourself.

**A note about the picture above:  This collage is titled "Yes, Them Black Birds Flying And You Need To Talk To The Hand Mr. Charley And Miss Anne, Then You Can Learn What Freedom Is", by Della Wells.  Please take a moment to look at her artwork and/or take a look at this blog post.**

We are a little over halfway through April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM).  SAAM was first officially observed in 2001 and is often seen as a part of the logical aftermath of the feminist organizing that “began” in the 1970’s.   As I talked about in the email and blog a few weeks ago, the movement to end sexual violence is often attributed to the second wave White feminist movement of the 1970’s, which brought us brick and mortar rape crisis centers and ushered in many new ways of addressing sexual violence, through support groups, counseling, and an increased reliance on state and federal carceral entities (ie: law enforcement and the judicial system) to hold perpetrators accountable. 

[SAAM posters for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center from 2003, 2005, and 2006.]

Black and Indigenous women have long been at the forefront of the anti-violence movement, beginning when colonizers first arrived and used sexual violence as a tool for oppression.  As a refresher, Black women were the first to openly testify to Congress about their experiences with sexual violence following the 1866 Memphis Massacre.  Given that Black women didn’t have legal bodily autonomy at that time, this presented significant risk.  In the1800’s, Black women were considered property, and it was deemed impossible to sexually abuse property.  This is what we’re going to bring awareness to today and as we move through SAAM:  State violence and Black women’s bodily autonomy, starting with slavery.  There are large swaths of information out there on this topic, and I’m merely presenting a historical snapshot through my lens.  I encourage you to take some time and engage in your own research about this.

In researching this blog, I was struck by a few things:  we often learn the big stories of slavery: about Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln and perhaps even Harriet Jacobs, whom I wrote about last month.  In doing so, we gloss over the details of the daily experiences of the vast majority of enslaved people.  I think we lose ourselves in the enormity of it, or at least I see how easy it is to lose myself in the enormity of it. 

I find it difficult to write about the commodification of Black women’s bodies for many reasons. Most importantly, this is not my lived experience and though I am imparting historical knowledge there is a really valid argument to be made about my inability to empathize.  I have consumed, without question, media and culture that embraces and encourages this commodification.  I have silently witnessed others, and have myself participated, in the objectification of Black bodies.  It is so unbelievably pervasive and so deeply tied to capitalism, reproductive control and coercion, congressional laws, profit, and almost every institution that exists today that it can be difficult to sit with the impact, yet we must. In doing so we can see how we can be swept up in it, willingly or unknowingly, and how we contribute to that current.

As the above video shows, slavery, like most institutions, was a gendered one.  This means that men and women experienced it differently.  There was a vast diversity of experience within those binary categories as well, and my intent here is not to homogenize any of this.  As we talk about sexual violence, we are reminded that concepts like Black women’s autonomy, agency, and consent are difficult to define given the multitude of complexities surrounding the power dynamics that White men and women who upheld the institution of slavery held over them.  As Clint Smith talks about in the video, the choices presented to enslaved Black women were impossible, and each person had to find ways to navigate them. 

Enslaved women were often sold at a lower price than their male counterparts yet were expected to perform the same amount of deadly physical labor.  Further, enslaved women, especially those of childbearing age, were often considered critical (at least to those interested in the long-term investment of buying and selling humans) because of their ability to reproduce.  In 1662, Virginia codified a law that stated that a person’s status was determined through “the condition of the mother.”  This meant that so long as the child’s mother was enslaved the child would be too, regardless of the status of the father.  This also meant that White men – plantation owners and others – who raped and sexually abused enslaved women often fathered children that they would then put to work on their own plantation or sell for profit. 

In 1808, a law was enacted that banned the international slave trade.  I don’t remember learning about this, do you? This law played a major role in the increased commodification of Black women’s bodies and their reproduction.  It did not, however, ban the domestic trading of enslaved people and in the years after, there continued to be a steady population increase of enslaved persons.  This is widely understood to be the consequence of owners of enslaved Black folx increasing their productive labor force through new births from enslaved people.  At this time, many enslaved people were sold from the upper South (Virginia) into the lower South (New Orleans was a massive trading port at this time). 

[1808 Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves]

As I write this, I notice how uncomfortable it is for me to describe the ways in which the value of enslaved Black women and their reproductive capacities are detailed in these articles, which use words like “domestic production”,  “breeding”  “forced reproduction”, and “capital”.  It seems like we haven’t found a way to give these women agency even in representing these truths.

Black women of a reproductive age were abused in a few different ways. They were either sold as a “half-hand” because their imminent pregnancies reduced their capacities to work as a full-time field hand, or they were bought specifically for their ability to reproduce.  There was another possibility here, the rarely talked about Fancy Trade, by which lighter-skinned, mixed race enslaved women were sold at auction for a very high price for the purpose of concubinage or forced prostitution, what we now know to be sex trafficking.  The terms Fancy girls or Fancy maidens emerged after 1808 to describe the enslaved Black women sold in this manner.  While these women were often wearing fancy dresses on the auction block – dresses they did not typically have access to - “fancy” here does not refer to luxury, but rather desire.  These women were purchased for the purpose of the enslaver being able to do “what he fancies.”

Something I found intriguing was how some of these ideas – mostly around the most grim and terrifying aspects of this topic, like the Fancy Trade or the forced reproduction of enslaved women – are often the most contested, at least in the online spaces (academic and otherwise) that I traverse to get this information.  There exists a counter narrative that pushes back on these truths because there “isn’t sufficient evidence.”  This sounds familiar to how survivors of sexual violence are treated today.  How much evidence is enough?  Who had the capacity to create evidence then, who was believed?  Whose truth counts? The hunger for generating and hoarding wealth drives us to depravity.  Our denial of that depravity drives us to continue our active investment in White Supremacy.  

[Picture titled "Slaves for sale: A scene in New Orleans" From: https://www.npr.org/2015/07/18/423803204/remembering-new-orleans-overlooked-ties-to-slavery]

Let’s go back to talking about “new births”.  Forced reproduction can be defined in many ways.  After 1808, the South’s capital and wealth became dependent on Black women’s ability to reproduce, although she had no say in the matter. Remember, enslavers, at least those who were interested in a long-term profit, wanted enslaved Black women to have as many children as possible so that the enslaver could either keep that child for forced labor on their plantation, or sell that child and split up the family.  Because of the 1662 law that ensured that children’s status followed that of their mother and laws that defined Black women as property, enslavers could rape Black women with impunity, impregnate them, and increase their own capital.  I would say that in this context, nearly all the human reproduction on plantations was forced.  Harriet Jacobs writes: “Dr. Flint [Norcom] continued his visits, to look after my health, and he did not fail to remind me that my child was an addition to his stock of slaves.”

 To justify forced reproduction, racist assumptions about Black women’s fertility abounded, defending this practice by stating that Black women would choose to have this many children had they been given the choice.  Aside from the rape and sexual abuse of enslaved Black women by White men, plantation owners often decided the pairings, partnerships, and marriages among the enslaved.  This amounts to a very early interpretation of eugenics, as enslavers would often pair enslaved people based on their physical strength.  This is complicated, as many enslaved people did want marriages and families of their own, encompassing the very real need for love and human connection, and the promises made, in some cases, to not to sell away married partners to other plantations.  Plantation owners incentivized childbirth by offering meager rewards such as extra food or clothing, and punished barrenness by forcing additional labor or selling the enslaved person away from family.  Black women did interfere with forced reproduction when they could through using natural birth control methods and abortifacients, as well as other methods of resistance.  This reminds me of what I wrote at the beginning, about the impossible choices enslaved Black women faced and their finding a way to navigate them. 

[A group of enslaved women in St. Augustine, Florida, mid-19th Century, with a White woman (perhaps an overseer) behind them.  From: https://www.vox.com/2019/8/19/20807633/slavery-white-women-stephanie-jones-rogers-1619]

I would be remiss here if I didn’t talk about the role that White women played in upholding these horrific standards for their own benefit.  White women on plantations often did not want to nurse their own children, and forced enslaved women into the role of a wet nurse after that woman gave birth to her own child.  The extra clothing or food that an enslaved woman may have received after giving birth was then overshadowed by her needing to prioritize the feeding of a White child. This book review talks about how White women encouraged their younger sons to rape enslaved Black women as a way for those sons to lose their virginity.  White parents at this time saw this as a central rite of passage that defined masculinity and also avoided disrespecting young White women. White women benefitted immensely from the financial and social profit from the increased presence of enslaved people, wrought through forced reproduction, sometimes as a direct result of their husbands raping enslaved women.  Feel free to search back through your emails for our discussion on Miss Anne, and how while she certainly was not at the very top of the hierarchy, she occupied a space where her comfort was prioritized and rewarded at the expense of Black humanity.

And then, there’s the recent research by Stephanie Jones-Rogers that details the lives and practices of White women who were themselves owners of enslaved Black folx.  These women often owned less enslaved people than their male counterparts, however they tended to own about twice as many enslaved women as enslaved men.  Whereas White men sometimes saw enslaved children or childbearing women as a burden because they couldn’t contribute as much to the physical field labor, White women tended to see them as a long-term investment.  And no, they weren’t kinder – quite the contrary.   

The bulk of these atrocities happened over two hundred years ago, which isn’t too far in the past.  We are living in that past’s future – in a time where Whiteness still commodifies and fetishizes Black women’s bodies, where voters are enabling reproductive autonomy to slip through our grasp, and where our medical system ignores that Black women’s maternal mortality rate is three times higher than white women’s.  Learning about the historical context isn’t time wasted.  It sets us up to better understand the road we’re currently on, the importance of sitting with our discomfort and of connecting the dots between then and now so we can all head in the same direction, toward liberation. 

Additional Resources:

Check out this blog and this book for more information on the economics of slavery after 1808. 

In 1936, the Federal Writer’s Project began documenting first-person accounts from aging formerly enslaved people for their Slave Narratives collection.  Over two years, they gathered over 2,300 accounts and transcribed them directly as spoken.  This article discusses the importance of this project.  The narratives were digitized in 2001, and can be accessed in their 17-volume entirety here.